Tuesday, August 20, 2013

past pieces of toronto: china court

From November 2011 through July 2012 I wrote the "Past Pieces of Toronto" column for OpenFile, which explored elements of the city which no longer exist. The following was originally posted on July 1, 2012.

Source: The Traveller’s Encyclopaedia of Ontario 1979 (Toronto: Government of Ontario, 1979)

As the future of the ethnic shopping mall is debated in the media,
one of the first to grace Toronto’s landscape is all but forgotten. A
glance at the exterior of Chinatown Centre on Spadina Avenue gives no
hint of its immediate predecessor, an attraction deemed worthy of
mention in the provincial Traveller’s Encyclopaedia:
“Constructed and decorated by craftsmen brought in from Hong Kong, this
sparkling assortment of authentic oriental pagodas, gardens and Chinese
boutiques makes a new focal point for the Chinese community in Toronto.”
Despite such attention, China Court operated for only a decade—the
victim of grander visions from its developers.

Once a private estate, the property at 208-210 Spadina Avenue was
redeveloped during the 1920s and became a sales and service centre for
General Motors trucks and coaches. By the early 1970s, the changing
demographics surrounding Spadina made it an attractive site for
developers targeting the Chinese community that was moving westward from
its historical base around Dundas and Elizabeth Streets. A
Chinese-themed shopping mall seemed like a winning prospect for one of
the first new large-scale projects that would hit Spadina.

China Court’s opening on August 28, 1976 was marked by a parade of
dancing dragons and lions that ran to City Hall and back. A newspaper ad
declared that “China Court is an authentic Chinese shopping facility
where you’ll find everything from fashions to delicately carved marble
ornaments. Watch as experienced chefs prepare exotic delicacies in the
Chinese Food Boutique. Or just enjoy a stroll in the Oriental garden.”

Advertisement, the Toronto Star, August 24, 1976.

Food was one of the mall’s main attractions. According to a 1982 Globe and Mail
profile, China Court’s ample parking lot was a huge draw, making it
easily accessible for grocery shoppers on the run. The mall was
considered friendly for newbies to Asian ingredients that weren’t as
ubiquitous as they are now—they could “roam around and look at prices,
produce and pickled eggs” at their own pace then relax afterwards with a
pot of tea and pastries. Among those who enjoyed such post-shopping
pleasures was CBC journalist Adrienne Clarkson, who found China Court
and its main supermarket Chinamart a convenient one-stop source for
items needed to make special meals.

On the other hand, China Court’s premiere restaurant, Jade Garden,
was panned in a guide to Chinatown eateries. On the four-star scale
Martyn Stollar used in his 1979 book Exploring Chinatown, the
Jade earned half of one. While he felt much thought had gone into
tastefully furnishing the premises, “one wished that half so much
concern were evident in other areas of its operation.” Stollar found
that drawing a server’s attention was a “full-time occupation” and that
“the overbearing, inefficient and intrusive service is among the poorest
I’ve encountered.” Food-wise, he felt it ranged from middling to awful,
and not worth pricing that made it one of Spadina’s most expensive
restaurants.

Barely half-a-decade into its life, China Court’s future appeared
murky. Owner Manbro Land Holdings proposed replacing the modest-sized
mall with a $25 million complex incorporating a department store, shops,
restaurants and condos that would be more appealing to newer, wealthier
immigrants. A murder in the parking lot in July 1981 earned notoriety
when 150 people watched a man bleed to death after his throat was
slashed with a broken drinking glass. In an unrelated development a
month later, federal immigration officials decided to boot Manbro
president Tim Sung Man out of the country in 1981. Man had lived in
Canada on an extended visitor’s visa since 1976, and the suspicion was
that officials were uncomfortable with an article in a Hong Kong tabloid
several years earlier which appeared to link Man’s family with a drug
lord (Man and his brothers sued the paper for libel).

Portion of an advertorial touting the new Chinatown Centre and other nearby attractions, the Globe and Mail, February 16, 1988. Click on image for larger version.

Man left the country, but later returned to push ahead with plans
that some Toronto city planners described as the most ambitious project
on Spadina since Casa Loma. The mall was closed in 1986 and the
tourist-friendly gardens and pagodas were cleared to make way for the
concrete and glass of the Chinatown Centre.

Additional material from The Chinese in Toronto From 1878: From Outside to Inside the Circle by Arlene Chan (Toronto: Dundurn, 2011), Exploring Chinatown by Martyn Stollar (Toronto: self-published, 1979), The Traveller’s Encyclopaedia of Ontario 1979 (Toronto: Government of Ontario, 1979), the January 27, 1982 edition of the Globe and Mail, and the August 24, 1976, July 13, 1981, August 12, 1981, and April 8, 1985 editions of the Toronto Star.